Sunday, November 4, 2007

Barone on Immigration Politics

Take a look at this National Review Online article by Michael Barone on the likely impact of immigration on the 2008 presidential race. He concludes that the Republican nominee will be on the popular side of this issue (unless he is John McCain) and the Democratic nominee will be defending an unpopular position.

Describing the overwhelming majority of Americans who opposed the amnesty bill proposed in the Senate and supported by President Bush, Barone says:
They want the current law to be enforced. It bothers them that we have something like 12 million illegal immigrants in our country. It bothers them that most of the southern border is unfenced and unpatrolled. It bothers them that illegal immigrants routinely use forged documents to get jobs — or are given jobs with no documents at all. You don’t have to be a racist to be bothered by such things. You just have to be a citizen who thinks that massive failure to enforce the law is corrosive to society.

That description works for me, what do you think?